Note (return) — Chapter I

Nature, in Daghestán, is most lovely in the month of May. Millions of roses poured their blushes over the crags; their odour was streaming in the air; the nightingale was not silent in the green twilight of the wood, almond-trees, all silvered with their flowers, arose like the cupolas of a pagoda, and resembled, with their lofty branches twined with leaves, the minarets of some Mussulman mosque. Broad-breasted oaks, like sturdy old warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the summer heats. Sportive flocks of sheep—their fleeces speckled with rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills—such is the frame that encloses the picture of every Mussulman village. On this Djoumá, the neighbourhood of Bouináki was more than usually animated. The sun poured his floods of gold on the dark walls of the flat-roofed sáklas, clothing them with fantastic shadows, and adding beauty to their forms. In the distance, crawling along the mountain, the creaking arbas16 flitted among the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past them, before them, flew a horseman, raising the dust along the road ... the mountain crest and the boundless sea gave grandeur to this picture, and all nature breathed a glow of life.